Saturday, February 14, 2015

When Helping Still Hurts

The book, When Helping Hurts, is an excellent description of what happens when good intentioned Western aid can actually hurt more than it helps if it is administered without a good understanding of the cultural context. This past week while attending a leadership team meeting of MANI (Movement of African National Initiatives,) in Nairobi, Kenya, I've been impressed by how the legacy of some old well-intentioned help is still hurting.
MANI is all about catalyzing a mission movement in every country of Africa. For the past fifteen years, since the AD2000 & Beyond Movement, MANI has been working hard at inspiring efforts to reach the remaining unreached people groups across the continent as well as preparing Africans for ministry in global missions.

But today, MANI is recognizing that the greatest stumbling block to success is the lack of commitment on the part of local African churches to support mission outreach. The problem is not that they don’t think it should happen, but that church leaders continue to see mission work as something led and funded by Westerners. It all has to do with the way churches were originally planted in Africa 50 to 100 years ago. Most expat mission organizations modeled church-planting as something independent of mission outreach, especially to other tribes, nations or people groups. So today, the idea that a national church should prepare and financially support young missionaries for cross-cultural outreach simply doesn’t exit. Most churches still think the West will provide resources for that.

Reuben Ezemadu, continental coordinator for MANI, stated during one of our sessions that unfortunately, the vestiges of old “evangelical imperialism” still lives on in Africa, especially as we see current church leaders following patterns of their Western missionary forefathers.
This is why MANI is attempting to connect with top heads of African churches to cast new vision that Africans can and should be mobilizing and resourcing mission efforts. A major summit is being planned for a year from now in Accra, Ghana in hopes that several hundred presidents of church denominations will come together for that purpose.


I’m praying this event will be a watershed moment and begin shaping a new African paradigm that will see national churches shedding old hurtful attitudes and truly begin helping to spawn a new generation of mission outreach across the continent and around the globe.

Me and WE

You would think that the name Wycliffe Ethiopia would belong to an old, venerable institution that had been involved in Bible translation for decades. That’s why I was surprised to discover it’s only been around a couple of years.


Bible translation in Ethiopia has been happening for a long time, however, but it’s been under the ministry of SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) and handled primarily by a large contingent of expat staff.  Then, five years ago, the Ethiopian government demanded that all non-profit organizations had to register either for development work or religious work, but not the two together. SIL, for various reasons, choose the development identity. The government immediately frowned on their continued work on Bible translations.

That’s why a group of Ethiopian Bible translators and staff opted to leave SIL and form a new national entity properly registered to continue the Bible translation work. Enter Wycliffe Ethiopia (WE.)

This past week, I've had the privilege to spend two days with the sixteen staff members of WE. With their legal situation in hand, they now are needing to press ahead with such things as a strategic plan, HR polices and guidelines for a board of directors. I've been asked to help them do just that.

It’s always so refreshing to meet more of the new generation of African leaders giving birth to and developing new ministries across this continent. WE is a great example. Led by a young man named Tefera, I sense both passion and vision for getting God’s Word to the remaining Ethiopian languages that want it.  And he’s not afraid to try some of the newest translation techniques that is revolutionizing how quickly the work can get done.


I look forward to see how this first introduction to WE will develop into some more organizational development workshops together later this year and beyond.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

PTL for POD

Print On Demand or POD. I’m learning how this new technology is revolutionizing and accelerating the process of publishing new Bible translations.

Today, I had a chance to visit the new POD bureau here at the Nigeria Bible Translation Trust.  At first it looks like a plain room with some innocent-looking printers, a binding machine and a Mac computer. But, what I learned is that this $20,000 equipment investment (thanks to Wycliffe Associates) is going to significantly change the way Bibles become available to unreached people groups in this country. Let me explain.

In the past, a New Testament translation project would take around 10 years to complete. Once ready to print, it would be handed off to the Bible Society which has a standard minimum press order of 5,000 copies. At $10 each, that meant an additional $50,000 had to be raised above and beyond the cost of translation before the Bible Society would touch the project. That kind of money doesn’t come easily for the smaller people groups of Nigeria.  Therefore, it can take years before any printed Bibles are actually available even though the translation is already complete!  Would you believe that there are four to six completed New Testaments here at NBTT that have been waiting for two years for these funds and there’s still no hope in sight of getting them printed?

Completed paper-back POD book done here at NBTT
Enter POD! Now, with a completed New Testament in digital format, it is easily formatted and immediately uploaded to high-speed inkjet printers. Add a bit of hot-melt glue in a special binding machine, trim the edges and you have a completed two-hundred page paper-back book in minutes that costs around $3.50! And here’s the best part of all: it doesn’t cost any more to print one book or a hundred.  In fact, if a small people group want to start with 50 New Testaments, they can now do that and then come back later to add another order for five or fifty any time they want.

It’s been fun seeing the excitement grow in the eyes of the NBTT Executive Director as we’ve discussed the implications of this POD technology. Not only does it have the potential to add a healthy new income stream for NBTT, but they can now prevent any further delay in getting God’s Word out to those in Nigeria who desperately need it.


So, PTL for POD!

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Supporting Supporters

Jos, Nigiera!

Once again I find myself in this cross-roads city in central Nigeria. After a six month's hiatus  in international travel, it feels good to be out here, on the road and sharing with my African brothers and sisters.

I'm back at the headquarter campus of the Nigeria Bible Translation Trust, the country's largest indigenous organization focused on getting God's Word written in all the remaining languages of the country that do not yet have a Bible.

This time, however, most of my audience are not the translators themselves, but members of their support committees. Usually community leaders or pastors of a related local church, they have never before been invited to participate in seminar designed to help them do their support job better. My role? To provide a number of short, impactful sessions that will help them gain a big picture understanding of the importance of Bible translation in missions plus learn a bit about good principles of project management, stewardship and team-building.

From the responses I've already received after the first two day workshop which involved about 160 men and women, I'm pleased by the affirmation I've received plus the request for copies of my talks all of which indicates that the messages seem to be getting through. Now I get to repeat the workshop again during the next two days with an even larger group of participants.

One treat for me was to discover among the participants some of the members of the translation project for the Kamwe people in northeast Nigeria. Coming from the very area where Boko Haram has devastated homes and churches, they have basically fled here to Jos and set up temporary residence in order to keep working on their Old Testament language project. Some have had their own homes destroyed and extended family members killed by the terrorists, yet, they carry on undaunted with this translation project. Amazing! These are the same men my good friend, Dr. Roger Mohrlang in Spokane, WA has been raising funds for as well as serving in the official capacity as language consultant.

What a privilege to stand next to men who truly know what it means to stand firm on the front lines of today's fiercest spiritual battles.